Cropped and Turned

My neighbor came by for coffee this morning after stealthily left little bags of delicious baked goodies on our porch for years. I had hoped to talk her into joining Blipfoto but as so many have said before her, she didn't feel she had the time. While she and her husband were in New Zealand, a PG&E sub-contractor entered their property, cut down six trees planted behind her house as a screen from the neighbors across the creek. leaving tall stumps and cut branches where they stood or fell. She suspects that they got the wrong house as the trees are behind her house nd not near any power lines or poles. She has already spent countless hours calling one person after another at PG&E asking for reimbursement for the damage, so far to no avail. 

Despite their ads on television about how much community means to them, and how much they are doing for it, they have proven that they actually don't care enough to even call the homeowner to explain what they want to do and why, and then ask for permission. Apparently we can put an alert on our property so that PG&E must make such a call, but it is up to us to call and request it. Otherwise they are under no obligation to do anything other than leave a notice on the front door. 

It's not really possible to respond to a note on the front door if one is on vacation.

We have our own screens to shield us from the bunker house and the RV parked behind it with grass growing up around its tires, but they are on the inside of our bedroom door. Our eight foot high fence burned down in the fire and we elected to replace it with hogwire  because we liked the more open view. Just a few days later a giant crane arrived and dropped prefab units on top of the foundation which had been built so many years before that the possibility of a house appearing there at all, much less overnight, never occurred to us. Ironic, in a way as the screen of trees behind the neighbors' house was planted as a screen from the prefab house being built across the creek from them.